Here's to Cody: R.I.P.

This is a final tribute to our Rhodesian Ridgeback, Cody, seen at the left here in his prime. His health had been in decline over the last year with failing hind legs, and bowel control. The later is a fairly unpleasant affliction for a dog that is over 100 pounds as you might imagine. The last 3 months he had barely been able to drag himself around the house, and couldn't stand or walk on slick floors at all. This left him isolated to the one downstairs room with carpeting.

We have had Cody since Jaimie was three, and took her to help pick him out. In this shot he is the one trying to climb up my leg. Actually, as dogs go he never was much into legs. He much preferred a sharp upward thrust of his nose into the unsuspecting crotch or ass of whoever was walking in through the front door. Regular visitors soon learned to protect themselves although the ladies never quite seemed to see the humor in this behavior.

Anyway, with his crotch sniffing days behind him, and his mobility shot we decided that the kindest thing was to have him put down.

Thanks for the memories, Cody

A tale of Two Cities or "For the want of a washer..."

It's rapidly becoming apparent that Jaimie picked an excellent time not to be in Colorado. Denver has been stricken with one of the longest continuous periods of snowy weather in history. It snowed again last night, and we haven't seen the ground since before Christmas.

You decide; this 100 F in the pool on Hamilton Island...........................or this (a high of 15 F in a Denver snow bank)









To add insult to the already chilly situation my truck decided it was time to quite working. With a high temperature today scheduled to be somewhere between 6 F and 18 F (-14 to -7 C) and blowing snow I was forced to crawl under for a look see. I was already convinced that the starter motor was the root cause but since the vehicle is only 3 years old it seem hard to believe it was already broken. Well it turned out to be a good news, bad news situation. Fortunately, the only thing wrong was that the power cable had come loose on the mounting stud of the starter solenoid (everyone knows what that is ...right?). The problem is getting to it. That required jacking up the truck, and removing the wheel, and wheel well liner. A lot of cursing, and two hours later the nut has been retightened and the vehicle is starting again. Now this could have all been prevented if General Motors had seen fit to put a lockwasher under the nut in the first place, then it never would have come loose to begin with. I guess omitting this 2 cent item is how GM is cutting costs on their $30,000 vehicles, and recruits new customers. No wonder they are a junk bond company, and no one wants to buy American cars!

Oh yeah....... there is a lockwasher under the nut now!

First day at Menai High

Well school finally caught up with the vacationers. At Menai High, and at most Aussie schools you have to wear the school uniform. I personally think this is probably a pretty good idea. For one, it puts every kid on a level playing field socially, and two it must save a lot on kids clothes. Jess loves it since she doesn't have to think about what to wear, but Jaimie is having a hard time getting used to it.

Here's Emma (Jess's little sister) modeling the under classmans uniform. I think she looks a bit like Jess. Andrew and Jess's older sister Kasey helped Jaimie get registered and settled in the first day.

Guess they don't usually have homework there. Jaimie is really looking forward to that.

You should have seen the one that got away!

School is fast approaching for the kids down under, so it's time to get another quick holiday in. The Aussies are flying everyone north of Sydney to Hamilton Island for some water sports. Hold on to your hats. First up was some more deep sea fishing so Jaimie, the Thomas's, Matt, and Will headed out to try their luck. After a brief stop to catch bait, they headed out into deep water and began to troll. Will caught a nice reef trout on the hand line. Supposed to be some goooood eating. They didn't wait too long before something smacked the lure hard and the action began. Since Jaimie hadn't had much luck landing any bait fish, she was first up and soon was fighting a 50 lb Spanish Mackeral. Andrew got her rigged into the fighting harness, and after some frantic untangling of lines Jaimie was reeling in the big one! After quite a struggle, and Jaimies arms starting to give out, the fish was along side the boat. It was a good sized fish and the deck hand tried to gaff the sucker but he missed three times before the mac spit the hook. In testiment to the decky's poor showing the lure flew back and smacked him up the side of the head. We hear there's some video of this epic struggle but we haven't seen it yet.

The kids had a great time all-in-all with lots of snorkeling, swimming, water polo, and driving around the resort in electric carts. From the pictures it looks like a very tropical place. There were a lot of parriots around I guess. Check out Jess and Kayley.

Jaimie is pretty psyched about fishing now. Andrew is planning on taking the family further north up to Queensland for some more fishing with one of his friends. I guess they are catching some big fish up there right now (and actually landing them too.)